Kungfu Panda: A retelling
by AngelicType
Summary: This story is about a panda who became a Dragon Master who has to master new kungfu skills to fight for justice and his life. But will anyone else accept him and will he be the Dragon Master that destiny has decreed? Read to know : Please review too


In the distance, the turtle looked through the flower-petalled river and meditated at the river bank. Taking a long, brittle stick which looked about the same age as himself, he prodded the water several times. Circular water waves emerged around the stick, spread out and faded away in the calm river waters. He lifted the wet stick and tossed it into the air, catching a single water droplet in his cupped hands, which he then let it flow with masterful control as he conducted his usual routine of cleansing himself and inner peace.

As another flower in full bloom wilted before him, its browning petals once again falling into the clear running waters, he sighed and his frail hands shook as he exerted a pressure on the stick to aid his fragile legs to stand. Time was running out and it was the moment to choose a new Dragon Master, his successor.

* * *

Po was concentrating really hard on catching a fly. With his chopsticks clutched in his hands, he tried to trap the fly inbetween them. He clambered onto the table and even tried to use his pathetically short tongue to chase the fly to the chopsticks.

It obviously wasn't working. He frowned. Beads of sweat rolled endlessly down his furry head. After a good twenty minutes, he sat heavily on the table, sighing in frustration.

He was never going to be the Dragon Master if he couldn't even manage to catch a fly. He raised his head to look at the Furious Five figurines, his daily routine. Gazing dreamily at them, he imagined what it would be like to be one of them, to have cool fighting skills and most importantly, to fight for justice.

Trudging down the stairs, he missed a step and fell, bouncing all the way to the ground level like a snowball during an avalanche, landing on his head. "Damn,"he grunted. As he sat upright slowly, rubbing the sore spot on his head, he saw tiny little Po figurines going circling just above his head. "Po, the Dragon Master, the greatest one of them all!"He said dreamily, disoriented.

* * *

It was the day that the Dragon Master would be determined and Po was looking forward to attending the majestic event. The Dragon Master was a mystery.

Six red flags lined the platform, each representing the Furious Five and the Dragon Master who was yet unknown in paintings with glorious gold letterings. There was celebratory vibe in the village today. Every corner of the village, no matter the place like shops, houses, road sides, hung many scrolls of the five kungfu idols. Po's eyes lit up. He ran to one of the scrolls and hugged it, kissing every one of the pictures of his idols.

"Po, please stop that." Mr Ping said sternly. Po's head swivelled to look at his father, his tongue lolling out. Then he let go of the scroll roughly, which swung wildly and hit a bunny right smack in his face. The rabbit began to cry.

"Oops, I'm sorry, I really am. It's just that I get to meet my idols today and I couldn't help hugging the scrolls," Po tried to explain to the bunny for his clumsiness. The bunny's mother who noticed her child was crying, slapped Po's cheek angrily. He fell to the ground with the impact.

When Po recovered, he noticed that the Furious Five, with Master Shifu in the lead, was walking towards the crowd.

Po frowned. The crowd was swallowing his idols up until he could not see them at all. He looked around wildly, trying to find a higher platform than the one he was standing on now. There were no high rise places here, except for the clocktower. _The clocktower._ And there was only one way to get up there.

Po wrapped a bundle of food, grabbing all his favourite snacks like chinese meat buns, hot dogs, cookies and other immeasurable varieties of food. Then he swung the bundle wildly with his right hand, aiming for the pointed peak of the clocktower. With strength surmounted by his desperation and love for his kungfu idols, he flung the bundle into the sky.

Bingo. The bundle landed on the sharp tip of the clocktower. Po furrowed his brow. All he had to do was focus on the food and he would get up there. Then, he heard a slight ripping sound, and realised that the cloth being used for bundling the food was ripping and being teared apart slowly by the sharp tip of the clocktower. There wasn't time to lose. He would catch the food on the way while climbing the clocktower.

He charged towards the clocktower with zest and determination. Whenever he saw a falling snack, he would open his voluminous mouth to allow the snack to land safely in his mouth and would start chomping away at the snack, even though he was running 90 degrees up a wall at high speed. Finally, he arrived at the top of the clocktower and he rewarded himself with swallowing the bulk of the snacks left in the partially ripped bundle in a massive mouthful.

When he looked down, he saw that the villagers and the Furious Five were pointing at him. Their faces looked stiff with disbelief. He grinned triumphantly, knowing that he had caught the attention of his live-long idols. Maybe everyone would see him in a different light too. Not all fat animals were useless.

"Po, behind you!" Mr Ping's voice was high-pitched and thick in distress. Po looked down and noticed then that his father was pointing behind him and not at him, while the other villagers and Furious Five too were staring behind him.

He turned to look back slowly, preparing for the worst to come. Indeed, a whitish-grey furball was about to hit him. The big cat-like creature looked up in the middle of his multiple somersaults and was also seemingly alarmed at Po's presence. The large cat tried to stop in midair and change his direction to avoid Po but inertia of the somersaults he did only caused him to tumnble and fall- onto Po's expansive belly.

Po's belly acted as a trampoline which bounced the white animal in the opposite direction while Po lost his balance on the clocktower and rolled down the conical roof of the clocktower and fell in midair, heating his butt on the ground.

"Ouch," he muttered, in self-pity, "first my head, now my butt. I must have fell 10 feet." Mr Ping waded quickly towards him and bent over him, checking his son's injuries. "That was a miracle, Po. You could have died when you were hit by that evil animal and fell so far down. You shouldn't have gone up there!" Mr Ping chided Po.

"Well, at least he had a weapon. His stomach," he heard a screechy voice snigger. He looked up to find Master Monkey looking down at him with amusement, while the other members of the Furious Five: Master Tigress, Master Mantis, Master Crane, Master Viper and Master Shifu and Grand Master Oogway gathered around him, glancing at him in concern.

"This is no time to joke, Monkey," Master Tigress reprimanded him seriously. She then clasped her hands and bowed reverently to Po as he stared back at her, confused. "Thank you for getting rid of Tai Lung, or he would have ruined today's ceremony otherwise," she explained.

"Well, I guess this is cleared up," Grand Master Oogway ended jovially," Po is the new Dragon Master!"

As he said this, the Furious Five, Master Shifu and even Po, gawked at Grand Master Oogway in utter disbelief. After a moment of thoughtful silence, Tigress said harshly, " Why would you let a commoner like him be the Dragon Master instead of us?" She seemed to echo the thoughts of the others. Then without waiting for an answer, she turned on her heels and kicked off into flight, towards the distant mountains.

"W-wait! Tai Lung has just been launched towards those mountains. And I don't think he will be happy at all." Master Shifu called behind Tiger. But her head never once turned back, as if she hadn't heard those words at all.


End file.
